The University of the Waves

Delivered at the Humanities Auditorium at Massey University, Palmerston North in September 2001, New Zealand composer John Cousins’ address revolves around diary notes and recordings from his stay in an area on the northwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island over the summer of 1995. Cousins describes how his journeys to the area became creative expeditions, as he began to make work in, of, and from the location, and how the area became central in forming his aesthetic and philosophical stance.